


polaroids.

by ifthebookdoesntsell



Series: almost heaven. [3]
Category: Mean Girls - Richmond/Benjamin/Fey
Genre: Alternate Universe - Small Town, F/F, Pastor's Daughter!Regina, Rejanis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:07:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28491387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifthebookdoesntsell/pseuds/ifthebookdoesntsell
Summary: There’s only one, larger bottom drawer, and when she opens it, she feels instant regret.She’d forgotten that all her polaroids had been dropped in here for later, for when she wanted to find them again.Janis had started the habit when she was nine, her young self naively thinking there could be nothing better than finding her memories when she wanted to reminisce.Now is the exact time that she doesn’t.Nevertheless, they need to be looked at, even just to decide which ones should be thrown out and which ones should be kept.She picks up the first one in the drawer.There’s nothing written on it, but it doesn’t even matter. She would recognize it anywhere.(Or, the one where Janis relives her memories before leaving her small town.)
Relationships: Regina George/Janis Sarkisian
Series: almost heaven. [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953340
Comments: 13
Kudos: 18





	polaroids.

**Author's Note:**

> hey y'all. happy 2021! here's a little something i wrote and have been for quite some time. it's definitely rather emotional, so be forewarned. i hope that this year is better for all of us, genuinely. you're all in my thoughts.

Janis looks around her bare room. 

Today is finally the day she’s been hoping for, dreaming of, since she knew what it was to dream. 

She’s leaving. 

Posters have been taken off the walls, favorite books stuffed haphazardly into her only duffel with free space, other trinkets and mementos packed away in her bookbag. The rest of it is going into storage or being donated, though she doesn’t mind either one. Her dad wants to make her bedroom an office, and her mom seems to think that the girlier clothes she never wore could be of good use to somebody else. 

She can’t help but agree. 

It’s relieving to see everything torn down, like a new beginning is really in sight. 

There aren’t even sheets on the bed. She’s taking those with her. 

It’s not her bed. Not anymore. It’s just the spot she once slept in, the one where she crafted her finest plans on how she was going to get out, the one where she learned what it was to fall in love, what it felt like to stay there, in that tiny space where she finally knew what it meant to be alive. 

The walls aren’t hers anymore. Her dad is already planning to paint them over from their current soft green. 

The carpet isn’t hers, and she likes it better that way. Over the years, it’s been trodden on, dirtied in an attempt to save the wood underneath. It feels much like the town, like the people in it: trampled on, forced to become something it isn’t, ripped in some spots and mended in other to the point that it’s impossible to tell whether it was always supposed to look like that or if something terrible happened and it needed to be stitched up before anybody found out. 

Still, she wiggles her toes against the fluffiness one last time, wanders over the desk to make sure that she took everything from the drawers-- especially that which might be incriminating. 

Janis sweeps her hand over the smooth wood, smiles at the little divot she finds in the middle from when she forgot to put a mat down when she was using an x-acto knife to cut up some cardboard for a diorama in the sixth grade. 

She remembers being pressed against this desk, being kissed, being told she was loved. She remembers sitting there, talking late into the night, grinning at the countless goodnight messages she received, sitting in the chair that completed the furniture set her parents purchased for the room. 

She searches the top two drawers first. 

Nothing. 

Good. 

She observes the wood. She never noticed how pretty it is before. 

The middle two. 

There’s the top of an eraser from a pencil, a wrapper from a fortune cookie from God knows when. 

Janis plucks them out. They can be thrown away. 

There’s only one, larger bottom drawer, and when she opens it, she feels instant regret. 

She’d forgotten that all her polaroids had been dropped in here for later, for when she wanted to find them again. 

Janis had started the habit when she was nine, her young self naively thinking there could be nothing better than finding her memories when she wanted to reminisce. 

Now is the exact time that she doesn’t. 

Nevertheless, they need to be looked at, even just to decide which ones should be thrown out and which ones should be kept. 

She picks up the first one in the drawer. 

There’s nothing written on it, but it doesn’t even matter. She would recognize it anywhere. 

It’s the first day of sixth grade, her and Damian at the bus stop, young and carefree and unburdened by secrets. 

She studies both of their faces, traces the freckles on her best friend’s nose that have now faded, pulls her wallet from her back pocket and shoves the photo inside. 

There are several more like it from through the years, and though Janis doesn’t remember it, she guesses that at some point she’d organized the photos, or maybe somebody else did, the somebody she doesn’t want to think about. 

She keeps each one of her and Damian, noticing how their smiles dim as time goes on, and when she runs out of space in her wallet she grabs one of her backpacks and starts putting them in the front pocket. 

The next few can be tossed out. They’re just photographs of her art and other inconsequential items. They have tiny holes through them, as if they were pinned up on her bulletin board at one point, but eventually weren’t good enough to stay there. 

Flicking through them feels like viewing her past moment to moment, like everything that’s been important and unimportant has all been swirled together and it’s her job to figure out what fits where. 

And the thing is, the more Janis thinks about it, the more she feels like parts of her existence don’t even fit together. It’s so obvious in these tiny squares, so obvious that there were too many versions of herself to count, all of them trying to please somebody different, but somehow missing the fact that the only person she should have cared about pleasing was herself. 

Her fingers itch when she pulls the next stack aside and catches a glimpse of blonde hair. 

Maybe this whole group should be thrown away before she can even look. Her heart tugs on both ends. Her fingers twitch and then there’s a single blue eye staring at her, a tad faded, but for sure-- 

She places the photos on the desk, spreads them out. 

_Regina._

God, she looks beautiful. 

None of the photos from the beginning are entirely special, just the two of them smiling at the camera, ice cream cones in hand, sitting on the sidewalk. In several, it looks as though at least one of them has been caught mid-sentence or mid-laugh. 

Janis can’t even remember how they felt then. 

_Were they innocent?_

_Did they know, even then?_

She’ll never be able to say. 

She flicks through a few from their early years, plucks one out that makes her heart speed particularly fast and places the others aside for her mom to mail to the George house. 

Janis sighs. She shouldn’t be thinking of anybody in this town right now. 

Her eyes scan over the next set, and her pulse starts tripping over itself as she watches their childhood ease disappear. It feels like she’s watching a relationship happen that isn’t her own. 

There’s a yearning in both of their eyes in several of the images, a longing for a bigger world that they could disappear into, get lost in, and do it together. 

She traces her finger over Regina’s face in one of the photographs, how relaxed she looks in just this singular moment. It looks as though she was trying to cover her face from the camera, but Janis had caught her in time, a soft, blushing smile playing on her lips. 

Janis pockets it, adding the others to the growing pile that she plans to send. 

She swallows hard. 

There’s a ringing in her ears. 

The next set feels too intimate to even look at. 

Janis can’t believe they were daring enough to take them. 

There’s Regina in various states of undress, them in bed together, photographs of steamed up windows, and one or both of them taking a hit. They’re gorgeous, washed over with the cool tone that the instant camera provides, blueing out the world in a way that makes it seem kinder. 

She can place a moment before and after every one of these images, can practically see the two of them laughing in the backseat, can feel Regina’s hands running down her back, can hear her taking the Lord’s name in vain and for once neither of them caring. There’s the sound of Ben E. King playing in the background, Regina’s arms wrapped around her neck, steady moonlight peeking through. 

There’s late nights and early mornings; there’s breakfast, and somewhere along this timeline of moments, Janis is able to watch this alternate version of them fall in love.

It’s difficult to believe that these faces are really theirs, that her brown eyes have ever looked that adoringly at somebody else. 

It’s difficult to believe that some of these moments took place exactly where she’s standing. Because, if she’s honest, this has never felt like _her_ bedroom. It wasn’t the safe haven she was promised as a child. 

And as she looks at the polaroids, it becomes more and more clear that what she’s seeing isn’t her relationship. They were never this happy, not really, not in the way they should have been. 

But they sure as Hell were in love. There’s no denying it. 

These memories, however many are missing from this stack, are hers. They may be the only thing in this room that actually belongs to her. 

But they belong to somebody else, too:

Regina. 

She’s been trying not to think of her. They haven’t spoken too much since she told the girl she was going to college in New York. 

Maybe it’s because she hadn’t asked if the blonde would come with her, or maybe it’s simply because the thought of taking Regina along with her was too scary at the time. Maybe it was the thought that Regina might fall out of love with her once they were in that big city that they always dreamed of, or that she would find somebody better if she could meet others who felt as out of place as they did in the world. 

Or perhaps it’s not as deep as that. 

Maybe it’s just that Regina feels like home, that she’s the _only thing_ that does. 

And to start over, Janis needs to leave her behind. 

But then again, she had promised they were going to get out of here if they tried hard enough. 

And even if it was in a high, post-coital fog, Janis Sarkisian keeps the promises she makes. 

It couldn’t hurt to ask if Regina would like to come along, and if she doesn’t, then Janis will have her answer on whether or not falling in love is really the Devil’s work. 

She grabs the photos she had intended for the mail and grabs one of the last plastic Ziplocs from the floor to put them in. 

No use in wasting a stamp when she can just hand deliver it. 

Janis searches the drawers one last time. 

_Nothing._

She looks around the room. 

_Nothing_.

None of this is hers. 

It almost hurts. But it also doesn’t. 

None of this is hers. 

It’s easier to think. 

None of this is hers. 

But somebody across town might be. 

She slings her backpack over her shoulder, writing a note on the whiteboard on the door that she’ll be back for the rest and then be gone by tonight. 

She doesn’t write that there may be one last something in this town that’s hers. 

She doesn’t write that she needs to see if that’s the case, if she can take that something with her, or she might regret it for the rest of her life.

**Author's Note:**

> so. what did you think? if you enjoyed (or want to know more!), consider dropping me a comment or a kudo down below. it would make me smile. 
> 
> as always, you can find me @ifthebookdoesntsell on tumblr. 
> 
> be safe x


End file.
